


Witness What It Cannot Share

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Genre: M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 21:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13198578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: On Christmas morning, the spirits watch the rebirth of Ebenezer Scrooge; Jacob Marley closest of all.





	Witness What It Cannot Share

Singing. Dancing. The clink of coins on countertops and into weathered palms, too little accustomed to the weight of coin. Snow swirled down through the frosty London air, lighting on window panes and rosy cheeks and sooty eyelashes. It filtered down onto the top hat of a redeemed man.

Across the street, above, beyond, four spirits watched Ebenezer Scrooge leading a march to the house of Bob Cratchit and family.

The Ghost of Christmas Past was the first to leave. Such matters of holidays as they were never interested them -- it was only when they were seen through the lens of nostalgia, of might-have-been, that Christmas was ever of any use.

The others were not as stingy; some were even entranced. Chains rattling, the ghost of Jacob Marley shuffled further to the ledge, dragging his cashboxes and padlocks and purses behind him. Exhausted from the weight, his knees and ankles popped as they pulled him forward. Crouching on the edge of the roof on all fours, gasping for the sight and leaning dangerously forward, he could peer down at Ebenezer Scrooge prancing through the street, knees high and feet certain on the icy cobblestones, moving as he had never moved when Marley’s living eyes were upon him.

In Marley’s life, Ebenezer Scrooge had a hunched, fleet walk, like the walk of a thief moving in the night. Marley had been accustomed to its sound and to the way the hairs on the back of his neck would rise in the man’s presence. He knew the brushed steel pressure of Scrooge’s glacial eyes upon him and the meager warmth of his body as it leavened the frigid air of their office. How clearly Marley remembered the man’s tight grip, one fist in a glove, the other around the handle of a walking stick, his shrewd mind clamped like a hungry dog's jaws around their finances. How clearly he recalled the way they’d sniggered over foreclosures and frolicked in their cruel riches, tallying rents and chinking coins in their boxes! Marely had often wound a bit of twine around stacks of eviction notices and knotted a bow in it, making a present of them for his partner so Scrooge would bare his teeth in vicious amusement.

Still those winters glowed in Marley’s heart, those long-past Christmases of misery and cruelty. Still he loved them. Still he loved the wicked smile on Scrooge’s face, so long as a smile was there at all.

He would never repent of it. Never.

Another chain coiled around his ankle. His soul twisted.

To see him now, transformed, smiling in the light of day… Jacob rasped for breath, chin on the ledge, chains cold on his wrists and ankles and around his throat. The weight of the chains held his limbs but most of all his burning heart oppressed him, like a bookkeeper’s glowing coal within his ribs.

Scrooge would be happy, now. Scrooge would yield. He would love.

Marley wished he had guts to gurgle or a throat to retch -- anything to explain or lighten the pressure.

“Here, now,” said a voice over his shoulder. Above him, the Ghost of Christmas Present offered him a mug of something steaming, holding it towards his face. The spirit's face was soft with pity.

Marley gargled up a laugh an reached for the cup.

“Thank you,” Marley whispered. He took the cup, shaking it in his hands as it pressed trembling to his lips. Wassail. He’d never gone wassailing, nor ever sung a carol outside a church's walls. He didn’t care to now. He wouldn’t know how to do it right, that much was for surety.

“Be joyful, man,” the Ghost of Christmas Present said. “It’s Christmas Day! Nothing to hurt you.”

“No,” Marley choked. A tear formed in the corner of his eye and spilled, hot and wet, down the wasted furrows of his cheek. It plinked into the cup of wassail. “There is. There will be. Nothing--”

Another chain snapped out and wound itself around his neck, jarring under his jaw. Marley wheezed and writhed, dropping the mug and clutching at the chains as they squeezed his throat, throttling the words out of him.

“Nothing can free me,” he gasped.

The chains loosened enough to let him drop forward. Marley coughed and gagged and the chains rustled out their dry laughter, content to have spoiled his scrap of comfort.

Ah, but even the chains did not know his every thought. He winced against the weight and squinted his eyes open to watch Ebenezer jig down the street. Scrooge’s chains were still taut around him, looped unseen and unfelt around his wrists and ankles and neck, leading into every nearby building and into the heart of every long-worn man and woman. But at the fringes, the deeper outskirts, Marley could see his old partner’s chains beginning to dissolve. Slowly, slowly, one by one, the links were falling open, dropping abandoned into the dirt.

Fresh tears dribbled from Marley’s eyes and he lowered his head. Nothing on earth was worth the horror of damnation, yet he cherished with all the hell-bound covetousness and avariciousness and jealousy in his heart this treasure he had always desired for his own. To see him reborn, to think that all the night's worry had worked…!

“It shall be well,” said the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Out of the billows of the deep dark cloak the voice came as soft and clear as the first taps of crystal frost against a window, when all to hear it are safe and warm inside. “Anticipate it, Jacob Marley. It shall be well.”

Marley spilled more tears. “I may not rest to see it.”

“So you may not,” agreed the Ghost of Christmas Present. “But be of good cheer, man. Look.”

Marley didn’t need to be told. In the streets, Ebenezer Scrooge reached out and embraced his redemption in the form of a poor lame child, a smile on his face the likes of which Marley had never seen. At the sight, Marley’s dead heart pounded and the chains slackened -- held, but slackened. Marley laughed aloud, a bubble of a noise like a sob in his throat.

Children. There might have been children, once. There could be children now, and they would never know of Jacob Marley, would never hear his hated name. But ages and ages of them could learn to love the kindly old godfather that was Ebenezer Scrooge.

The chains tightened and tugged. They would not wait long.

“I cannot stay to see him,” Marley said. He looked up at his companions, gazing at them from their feet. “But please, answer me, spirit? Say he will not join me.”

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come tilted its head in the cowl.

“Be of good cheer,” it echoed. “Your love is not spent in vain. Our intervention will take root and Scrooge’s soul shall be secured. Return to your wandering, better than you were.”

Marley clasped his hands together, tucked beneath his chest, and gave thanks with his forehead touched to the shingles. The chains shifted, eager to take him away, but his prayers of thanksgiving held him to the mortal world another few instants, and his ghostly tears splashed on the roof to yield the fragrance of the distant sea, or the far more distant scent of aqua and sanguine.

“Thank you,” Marley breathed. “Thank you, spirits. If there is anything… thank you.”

“There is nothing,” the Ghost of Christmas Present said, embarrassed. As there had been no favor really asked, there could be no question of repayment, and likewise there could be no keeping Marley with them. He was a creature of torment, and there was no taking him beyond that and into the transported plane of joy-with-others. What, then, could they do, if they could not bring him to a feast and give him joy in the morning? “Be comforted, Jacob Marley. God bless you.”

“Thank you,” Marley said again, casting one last glance at Ebenezer Scrooge, ensconced in the Cratchit house and surrounded by the joyous and disbelieving.

Jacob Marley could not be joyous, but he did believe. He stared at Ebenezer’s face, gratitude and happiness lighting him until he glowed like a sun dawning through the clouds. The chains resumed their mastery, dragging Marley on his belly across the roof of the house and up into the freezing air of a wintry London, back into the seething heart of the miserable maelstrom. He watched Ebenezer until the flying limbs and cold chains of his fellow spirits closed around him, buffeting him away from Christmas joy, and he was lost once more.

So it was. So it would always be.

But there was a change, while change could still happen. Ebenezer was saved.

The two ghosts remained on the rooftops.

“Much to do,” the Ghost of Christmas Present said at last. “Much to do.”

“Push Scrooge toward the churchyard today,” the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come said. “Make him visit the grave. Have him put a sixpence in the church box for the soul of Jacob Marley.”

“It does no good, you know.”

“It is your Christmas,” the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come insisted. “You may yet give a gift to an unfortunate.”

The Ghost of Christmas Present looked at him. “Will he think to do it again? Next year, I mean?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“No.”

The Ghost of Christmas Present's face crumpled again in pity. “Oh, but that is too bad! Perhaps he only needs reminding. We are so finite -- I and my brothers all die. But you shall always be. Can you not--”

“You were right before. It does Marley no good to be prayed for. He is concluded,” the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come said. “Talk to Past, if you doubt it. A lifetime of cruelty was wasted through his hands. One love, however great, cannot absolve him of it.”

The Ghost of Christmas Present lowered his eyes.

"You would be doing him a kindness," the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come murmured, "but it would only be civility. Scrooge's mind is on the living, now, as it ought to be. This is a kindness that we may do for the dead, but I do not foresee Scrooge making a tradition of it."

Below them, there was a happy dinner taking place, the wine and sherry and nephews and newly-made godchildren brought together to know what gold, properly used and properly understood, was really for. Food and friends and songs and sweet harmony between men. It was living. It was what living was for.

“Very well,” the Ghost of Christmas Present said. “It certainly won’t be hard to bring his mind to the grave today. I--”

“I must go,” his companion said. “I’ve tarried long enough. God bless you. I will meet your brother soon.”

“Yes. Be well, then. God bless you.”

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was gone. The Ghost of Christmas Present looked here and there, listening to the wind through the chimneys and over the rooftops. At last he shook himself, bringing up a smile at the thought of the many precious hours ahead. The morning was half-spent and there was much to do.

He vanished into the swirling snow, spreading himself across all the length and breadth and love of Christmas Day. And why not? It was a precious day of all the year.

A day on which all men sang, even in Hell.


End file.
